As Spine Straightening as a Rooster Crow

Thoughtlessly this morning I brushed my teeth with the tap
water. I cooked oatmeal over a steady natural gas flame in a heated home and
then poured it over frozen blueberries.
When I saw the clock blinking on the stove, I realized we must have had
a power outage in the middle of the night, but a quick time check with my cell
phone told me that it was for less than a minute. I stood in my bathrobe and slippers, clothes
made in another part of the world just so I have something to lounge around in, and my mind flashes to…mothers bathing their children in littered streams in Bali, bundled
up students on benches in an unheated immigrant school in wintery Shanghai, the 14
hours power outages that are common in Zimbabwe, the garment workers in Dhaka,
the women selling small bags of
grain that they have beaten into flourly submission beside the road
in Ghana for whom lounging about is something you save for after you’re dead. I searched my mind for images of people I saw in Africa who
had shared as many mornings with the world as I and came up empty.

What’s it like to travel?
It makes rinsing out the oatmeal pan an act of wonder.